


Echoes of the Ocean

by gentlezombie



Category: The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Capaill Uisce, Developing Relationship, F/M, Getting Together, Horses, Thisby Island (The Scorpio Races), Yuletide, as romantic as these two are going to get
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 07:16:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17018181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlezombie/pseuds/gentlezombie
Summary: In the aftermath of the Scorpio Races, it is easy to get lost. But the ocean gives even as it takes, and Sean and Puck might get what they need, after all.





	Echoes of the Ocean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tenillypo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenillypo/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Tenillypo!

SEAN

I have a bad habit of thinking in forevers. If I win this race on the bones of the island, Corr will be mine forever. If I get my father’s greystone cottage back, it will weather the storms forever. The magic of the sea and sand sings in my blood and I am going to race forever.

None of these things are true.

We are not the same, Corr and I, after that last race by the Scorpio Sea. Change always seemed alien to me, something that didn’t touch windswept Thisby or the dark blue ocean biting at its shores. But we went and changed, both of us. Corr kept me alive, a shield between me and the sea and the mass of _capaill uisce_ thundering past us like death. I kept Puck Connolly alive, or tried to, and tied a red ribbon bracelet around her wrist, remembering the flutter of her pulse against my lips. 

Like the ocean, Thisby gives nothing without taking. Corr will never run again, not with a broken leg. The cottage had become a symbol of freedom in my mind without my notice, but it is in shambles, the thatched roof sagging, rain pouring in. Everything is uncertain, hovering in the air like a bird in a gale. I think of my last wish, gifted to me by the mare goddess: to get what I needed. I wonder if one really gets to wish twice.

“Why are you here, Sean Kendrick? I’d think a man as lucky as you would have his hands full.” 

It’s George Holly, his voice now familiar and not on account of the accent. I am at the Black-Eyed Girl and it’s eleven in the morning, no time to be sitting in a pub at all. I’m here mostly because I can. I don’t know what to do with my newfound freedom. The lack of purpose irks me. Holly, on the other hand, looks contented as ever as he slips into the booth on the opposite side of me.

“Having breakfast,” I tell him. “It’s what people do.” It’s true that I have been pushing the scrambled eggs and bread around the plate and watched the tea grow cold.

“At this hour? I thought you lived on sea-salt and moonbeams. To be honest, I still do.” He smiles at the waitress whose name I’ll remember in a minute. The cold tea gets whisked away and replaced with a steaming pot, two sets of cups and a comical tower of biscuits and sweet cakes.

“What’s it to you?” I say, knowing I should try more with someone who has talked about deals and stables and a shining future I can’t quite imagine. But he’s also American, and like he said, I have enough salt in me not to trust him as much as I like him.

The design on the teapot is familiar. A wreath of red holly and leaves. It constricts around my heart, even as something tugs at my mouth – a smile. I imagine tiny _capaill uisce_ swimming in the contained storm inside the clay pot. I think it’s one of Puck’s older designs. And that, too, pulls at something raw and unfinished in me.

He shrugs and pushes the tea towards me. The berries are bright and friendly, not at all like the weapon I know them to be. “You don’t make anything easy, do you?”

“Things rarely are.”

“They could be, though, between you and Kate Connolly.”

“Why is it that everyone knows more about my business than I do?” I say, exactly as sharp as intended. People wear me out these days.

Holly sighs. “Sean Kendrick, you are fast on the racetrack and slow in everything else. Still like one of those old stone men holding up the church. See? You’re doing it now, trying disappear into that charming green velvet.” He picks at a frayed thread on the bench.

There is a distance between me and Puck that is new. It’s not the same as before I knew her, because I do. I kissed her in a crowd with cameras flashing. I know how her hair feels in my hands. I agreed to divide the winnings from the race, because she wanted it and I wanted what she wanted, and I also wanted Corr.

Perhaps this is what happens to people who save each other from death, treading in a strange no man’s land. Somehow I never get around to the next step.

“I’ve been doing repairs on the house,” I say. “Cleaning out the stables. It’s an hour to Scarmouth, anyway.”

And I have spent long hours with Corr who won’t leave me no matter what I whisper into his flat ears, wondering if he can be happy on dry land. I never thought of happiness before Puck. But when it comes to Corr, the thought is easier.

“Ah. Can’t very well ride here on your _capall_. What are you going to do with him?”

“Whatever he wants to.”

“That’s no answer,” Holly says, and he is right.

“I took the sea from him,” I say. The weight of November is pushing me down, all of it, the memory of lights and laughter and funerals and the dark sea where everything begins and ends. Maybe it shows on my face. I don’t see how it couldn’t. “Don’t know what he ever got from me.”

“Your heart,” George Holly says, light and easy. His finger is tracing the rim of the tea cup.

“That’s an even worse answer.” But it’s true. Of course it is, like the grey skies and the white cliffs and the painting of a red horse in a cave under the cliffs. What I don’t know is whether it’s enough.

“Far be it from me to give you advice,” Holly says, and then proceeds to give me advice. “But you are much better at evaluating horses than your own worth. You don’t value your heart half enough.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It means that you should be talking to your girl, not me. Sharing your heart isn’t like hacking chunks of it off at the butcher’s. It won’t run out.”

“She’s not my girl,” I say. I don’t think she’d like to be called that. She is Puck, and Kate, and a Connolly, and a thousand other things.

And I might be hers.

PUCK

I reckon we’re both unmoored by the madness of November and everything that follows. I never paid much attention to what would happen after. I only thought of marching to Malvern’s office wearing my mother’s ghost, her fighter’s face and her jewellery from the sea, and letting him know we were free of him. Well, almost free, since I have to work somewhere, and there isn’t a better place on this island for someone who lives for horses.

It takes Sean an embarrassingly long time to come by our house. I’ve no doubts about him, though I don’t know what I should expect. He paid the price of our victory. We have paid back, I think, but what he lost and gained twists my heart. 

Our wounds heal in the meantime. The knife-gash on my thigh turns into a formidable scar. Dove stops shivering when the wind blows from the sea. I bring seaweed to her lean-to to get her used to the smell, whisper the ocean into her ear until she remembers not to be afraid. I remind her she is of Thisby.

I feel like I ought to be cross with Sean when he shows up, old coat rattier than ever and still smelling like blood and rage and salt. It’s Corr, I realise even as my heart beats faster, and Sean, because it’s impossible to separate them. I suppose I smell like Dove.

“So you’re here,” I say. It doesn’t come out as strict as intended, and I frown for good measure.

“Good to see you too, Puck,” he says, hands in his pockets, hovering by our doorway. I don’t like seeing him like this. He’s supposed to have one foot on land, another in the ocean, solid like the cliffs. It’s what made me notice him, his silent weighty presence. Now I’ve the odd feeling he could take off like a skittish colt.

It comes to me what someone once said in passing, that one day Sean Kendrick would realise he was lonely.

And I realise that I’ve got Dove and Finn and the house with light spilling out like honey around our feet, a dozen unfinished teapots and the kitchen overtaken by Finn’s November cakes project. They must be perfected since he got the apprenticeship at Palsson’s.

I don’t know what Sean’s got, aside from what I can smell on him. His face is sharp, his eyes bruised purple by too little sleep. Maybe he always looked like that, and I’m only now noticing because he is tired and drifting. 

“Come inside, you,” I say and take him by the wrist, like he did to me on a grass-covered cliff and sent my heart cantering. For a moment he looks at my fingers on the bare patch of skin between coat and glove, and then lets me pull him in, some invisible wall of resistance turned liquid. 

Like he’d been waiting for those words for a very long time.

I don’t let go of him, not while he sheds his coat or takes off his boots. My fingers find the pale skin at the nape of his neck, and I can feel him shiver in the warmth of the house. It’s like picking up the thread where we left off, put aside this huge whatever it is for a while, and then wondered why we didn’t get around to it sooner. Only I don’t think this is something you can ever finish.

He’s touching my face, rough fingers trailing lightly along my cheekbones, finding the line of my jaw. When he reaches my chin I know to wait for it, and I push into the kiss, ungraceful, my heart beating like the festival drums. My fingers lock behind his neck, and his hands skim down my arms and settle on my waist. Then we are more hugging than kissing, clinging together, his face buried in the crook of my neck.

“I missed you,” he whispers, tickling, like it’s a surprise.

“I should hope so,” I say against his sweater. I want to get it off, see pale skin and badly set bones, I want all of him. And then, because I’m a fool and I feel how thin he is against my cheek, I ask: “Are you hungry?”

He laughs, a hot puff of air, and though my face turns red I think it was the right thing to say. I can feel him ease against me.

“If I say yes, will we stop?”

“No. We’ll steal cakes from the kitchen and go up to my room and then we’ll not come out, ever.”

Sean grinning might be my favourite thing in the world. It makes him look younger, brighter. “Lead the way, master thief. I’m yours to command.”

For someone who doesn’t talk much he knows how to light me up from the inside. I rarely feel as certain as I do when I lead him up the creaking stairs, the November cakes sticky and golden in our hands.

Much later, buried under the quilts like animals in their nest, words come easy. I thought I knew Sean, and I did, but now I know more. I know he is as fragile and strong and foolish as anyone, only more so, because I love him.

“I keep thinking this is all going to go away,” he’s saying, holding me like I’m going to disappear into thin air. I know his mum was lost to the mainland, his father to the races. My parents’ bedroom is still empty, gathering dust.

“Stop that at once, Sean Kendrick,” I tell him against the lump in my throat. “Do you see me going anywhere?” I drape over him like the world’s worst blanket, trapping him down. I feel his laughter in my chest.

“I can’t see a thing,” he points out, because my hair is falling in his face. I’m not sorry. It’s his fault for ruining my braid.

“There you have it,” I say. “And just so you know, I think I’m a forever kind of girl.”

“You think?” Sean says, pulling my hair back. That word, forever, makes his face do something complicated. He looks so serious all of a sudden. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I can’t but push on. Never let it be said that the Connollys are not brave.

“Well, you can never know for sure, can you? But I don’t see why I should go looking for another boy when it was such a terrible bother the first time.”

Sean lets out a breath, and it feels like something he’s been holding inside him for the longest time.

“I need _you_ ," he says, his voice a little broken. "I love you, Puck Connolly.”

“Finally,” I say and drop down to kiss him.

I don’t know that I was ever looking, really. It felt more like the island pushed us together, a bit of magic like the red bracelet still around my wrist. Or perhaps we were searching for something, unaware of it, like treasure hunters on the beach looking for the perfect shell. The kind that grants wishes and echoes the ocean.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this little gift. It was a joy to return to these characters and the island I fell in love with ❤


End file.
